The beginning of everything is a new exhibition that opened this month in Vienna. The exhibition is a collaboration between the Naturhistorisches Museum (NHM) Vienna and the Institute of High Energy Physics (HEPHY) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, celebrating the 50th Anniversary of HEPHY.
It hopes to help answer questions that have bothered humans for centuries. Questions such as: What does the universe consist of? Where does it end? How many dimensions are there?
Visitors will be taken on a journey beginning more than 13 billion years ago, at the start of the universe. One section of the exhibition is devoted to CERN. Visitors will learn about the most recent scientific findings and get to know the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments, like particle accelerators and particle detectors. They will also be given the chance to create their favourite possible scenario for the end of the universe, by choosing between Big Crunch, Big Rip or Big Freeze.
In addition, a number of artists offer a contrasting approach to this complex topic from various visual, optical and acoustic angles and perspectives.
The opening was also attended by Nobel Laureate Professor George Smoot, as well as the Austrian Minister for Culture, Thomas Drozda, and the President of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Professor Anton Zeilinger.
Several pieces of art created by Michael Hoch, an artist and a scientist working at CERN, as well as by Chris Henschke, an artist in residence at CMS, were inspired by the CMS experiment (Image: Kurt Kracher/ NHM Wien)
For more information : http://www.nhm-wien.ac.at/beginning_1.
Learn more about exhibitions at CERN on the visits website.